Timing of Planned Parenthood raids is suspect

Editor’s Note: The following is the Editorial Board’s Viewpoints editorial for the issue of Wednesday, October 28, 2015:

Officials from the Office of Inspector General enter the Planned Parenthood South Texas Surgical Center in San Antonio on Oct. 22. Texas announced it was kicking Planned Parenthood out of the state Medicaid program on Oct. 19.

Texas is gearing up for a full-fledged witch hunt.

The target is women’s health provider Planned Parenthood, and it is clear that lawmakers and state officials will not stop until the 94-year-old nonprofit is completely dismantled in Texas.

Last week ended with Planned Parenthood being put on notice that the state intended to strip the nonprofit of its ability to receive Medicaid reimbursement for health services, alleging that Planned Parenthood had “committed and condoned numerous acts of misconduct captured on video.”

Interestingly, the state has not yet produced any evidence to support its allegation that laws or policies were broken aside from the heavily edited videos taped in secret and released by an anti-abortion group called the Center for Medical Progress. The controversial fetal tissue program that has dominated the national headlines doesn’t even exist in Texas.

Even so, three days later, state health officials raided three Planned Parenthood offices and subpoenaed the group for thousands of documents, including detailed patient records.

It is the state’s job to investigate Medicaid fraud. But usually state disciplinary action follows an investigation rather than precedes it. Stuart Bowen, head of the Office of Inspector General at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, gave several interviews over the weekend, including one with the Texas Tribune suggesting that the decision to strip funding was not final. However, that flies in the face of messaging from the state’s top Republican leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott who crowed on Twitter that: “Texas completely ends taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.”

The timing of the investigation certainly gives the impression that the state is trying to validate its decision with a retroactive investigation.

This week’s revelation in the Dallas Morning News that the state is working with a whistleblower who worked at Planned Parenthood for eight years does little to assuage our concerns. Bowen has declined to answer questions about the chain of events leading to the fraud investigation or give details about what investigators are hoping to find, only saying that he hopes to complete it quickly.

We certainly expect the state to do due diligence on allegations of fraud no matter the source; however, there is an orderly process that has been circumvented by conservative leaders, including Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, in their eagerness to obliterate Planned Parenthood over abortion politics.

The zealous enthusiasm for Planned Parenthood’s demise ignores these two important facts: Abortion remains constitutionally protected and legal in this country, and Medicaid is a largely federally funded safety-net program that has not paid for abortion, except in rare cases, since 1978. Of the $3 million Planned Parenthood receives in Medicaid reimbursements in Texas, only $310,000 comes from the state.

Ultimately those who will suffer are the low-income Texas families who rely on Planned Parenthood for contraception and medical care. They deserve the same access to care and the same ability to choose their own medical providers that the rest of us have come to expect.

When it comes to women’s health care, Republican leaders seem determined to score political points at the expense of the state’s public health and individual freedom of choice that extends far beyond the ability to decide whether to have an abortion.

This short-sighted, political fixation of women’s ability to make babies completely misses all the other reasons why women need clinical services: urinary tract infections, ovarian cysts, yeast infections, irregular menstrual cycles, endometriosis, menopause and infertility. None of those services is covered by the Texas Women’s Health Program, the state’s solution to cutting Planned Parenthood out of Medicaid family-planning services.

The net result is more barriers to women’s health care — not fewer.

Yes, Planned Parenthood is political. Its political work means that it is no longer criminal for a woman regardless of marital status to obtain birth control, nor does a woman need to seek permission from her spouse to obtain birth control. Those advances, less than a century old, guarantee equitable health care to all women — not just the wealthy — and ensure that the religious objections of some Americans do not make family-planning decisions for those who do not share those views.

And now Texas appears poised to step backward and reinstitute the penalty of poverty, which requires women with the least amount of time and resources to cobble together medical care. For those women, cost is a complicated equation that includes more than just the price of services. Transportation, wait times, comfort and choice all come into play. The net result is that if the penalty is too steep, poor women choose to postpone care, often resulting in more costly and harmful outcomes later.

So, yes, please investigate. But if fraud is found, the punishment should be proportionate to the crime. To warrant the disruption to the lives of thousands of Medicaid recipients and diminished access to health care throughout the state, any fraud would need to be rampant, willful and systemic.